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Cultural Cognition and Public Policy: The Case of Outpatient Commitment Laws

What explains controversy over outpatient commitment laws (OCLs), which authorize courts to order persons with mental illness to accept outpatient treatment? We hypothesized that attitudes toward OCLs reflect cultural cognition (DiMaggio 1997), which motivates individuals to conform their beliefs about policy-relevant facts to their cultural values. In a study involving a diverse sample of Americans (N = 1,496), we found that individuals who are hierarchical and communitarian tend to support OCLs, while those who are egalitarian and individualistic tend to oppose them. These relationships, moreover, fit the cultural cognition hypothesis: that is, rather than directly influencing OCL support, cultural values, mediated by affect, shaped individuals' perceptions of how effectively OCLs promote public health and safety. We discuss the implications for informed public deliberation over OCLs.

Date posted: July 29, 2008
; Last revised: April 16, 2013

Suggested Citation

Kahan, Dan M. and Braman, Donald and Monahan, John and Callahan, Lisa and Peters, Ellen, Cultural Cognition and Public Policy: The Case of Outpatient Commitment Laws (2009). Law and Human Behavior, Forthcoming; Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper No. 47; Harvard Law School Program on Risk Regulation Research Paper No. 08-21. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1178362 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1178362